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Niko Goodrum has been a find for the Tigers. His 232/.297/.435 slash line is admittedly ho-hum, but he’s providing plenty of value with his versatility and verve. Reminiscent of Tony Phillips, the 26-year-old former Twins prospect has started games at six positions. In his first Motor City season, he’s served as both a spark plug and a Swiss Army Knife.

He came to Detroit on the cheap. After toiling for eight years in the Minnesota system, Goodrum arrived as minor league free agent with just 18 MLB plate appearances under his belt. He’s more than earning his league-minimum money. While the aforementioned offensive numbers are pedestrian, the switch-hitter has driven his fair share of baseballs up gaps. His 24 doubles and 12 home runs rank third on the team, and he’s legged out two triples to boot.

Goodrum recognizes that his ability to play all over the field is a major reason he’s getting an opportunity with the rebuilding Tabbies. Another is that he’s finally found himself.

“I’m not searching anymore,” Goodrum told me. “I think that when you’re trying to find your identity of who you are, including what type of hitter you are, the game is a lot harder. When you believe in the things that are in you, your ability will start to show.”

Goodrum feels that corner was turned two years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Javier Baez has been one of the best and most valuable players in the National League. He’s already set career highs in doubles, triples, homers, and — most importantly — WAR, and the Cubs wouldn’t be where they are without him. At the same time, Baez has drawn a total of 17 walks, and seven of those have been intentional. He’s got 105 strikeouts. He’s swung at literally almost half of all pitches thrown out of the strike zone.

I can’t sit here and tell you whether this approach is sustainable. I mean, I suppose the approach is sustainable, but I don’t know if it can keep on leading to these same results. It’s difficult to say because we’ve barely seen any hitters like this before. It feels like Baez couldn’t possibly sustain this, but it feels just as strongly like Baez has broken out. Like he’s figured out how to best channel his aggressiveness.

What you won’t find here, then, is a conclusion. I don’t know what Javier Baez *is*. I don’t know if he’s a 100 wRC+ kind of hitter, or if he’s a 140 wRC+ kind of hitter. But I had a realization the other day, and I wanted to share some observations with you. When Baez first arrived in the majors, he was known for his Gary Sheffield-like bat speed. The question was whether he’d make enough contact, and lay off enough balls. It stood to reason that, if Baez was going to succeed, he’d have to make himself more selective. That isn’t what’s happened. Baez has leaned into his own aggressiveness, if you will. He’s hitting better than he ever has. He’s swinging more often than he ever has. Baez has become ready to hit every pitch. I’d like to show you some supporting information.

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By just about any measure that counts, Alex Bregman has been one of the best players in baseball. In fairness, Alex Bregman was expected to be one of the best players in baseball, but not quite to this degree. I can explain, using our old standards — projections and WAR! Coming into the year, among both hitters and pitchers, Bregman was tied for the 45th-highest projected WAR. He was sixth in projected WAR among Astros, behind Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, Justin Verlander, Dallas Keuchel, and George Springer.

Right now, Bregman and Verlander are tied atop the Astros’ WAR leaderboard. And Bregman is tied for 10th in all of baseball, around names like Matt Carpenter and Nolan Arenado. It’s not that no one ever saw Bregman coming — he was already a good everyday player, and the Astros did, after all, select him second overall in the 2015 draft. But Bregman has steadily continued to improve, to the point where he’s nearly maxing out his skills. Because of how loaded the Astros’ roster has been, it’s been more difficult for Bregman to stand out. It’s funny to refer to someone as having played in Altuve’s shadow, but Bregman’s completing his star turn, and he should be recognized as such.

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While the AL East race appears to have tilted decisively towards the Red Sox over the past five weeks, an even more dramatic turnaround has taken place in the AL wild card race over an even longer timeline, one involving the Mariners and A’s. This one has yet to be decided, which is good news, because it’s practically the last race standing in the Junior Circuit.

Through June 15, the Mariners were running neck-and-neck with the Astros despite a massive disparity in the two teams’ run differentials, a situation that — as I had illustrated a few days earlier — owed a whole lot to their records in one-run games (22-10 for Seattle, 6-12 for Houston). The A’s, though solidly competitive to that point, were something of an afterthought, far overshadowed by the Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani show in Anaheim:

On June 16, despite placing Matt Chapman on the disabled list with a contusion on his right thumb, the A’s, who had lost to the Angels 8-4 the night before, kicked off a five-game winning streak, taking the two remaining games of the series that weekend, then two from the Padres at Petco Park and the first game of a four-game set against the White Sox in Chicago. Though they merely split a four-gamer on the South Side, they swept four from the Tigers in Detroit, sparking a six-game winning streak that also included two victories at home against the Indians. Remarkably, they’ve strung together two separate six-game winning streaks since then, as well, one against the Giants (a pair of walk-of wins) at home and the Rangers in Arlington from July 21 to 26 and then another from July 30 through August 5 at home against the Blue Jays and Tigers. Alas, that one ended on Tuesday night against the Dodgers.

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I love pitching. Perfection on the hill is an amalgamation of ability, strength, stamina, philosophy, execution, and tactics, where every pitcher is uniquely assembled in a sea of talent. Some have blistering heat, some a variety of breaking pitches, and others are masters of approach and execution. We often find similarities in their numbers, but the means by which they arrive at those numbers can vary wildly. An understanding of how a pitcher attempts to prevent runs is essential to better understanding the what of his results — and that can most easily be grasped by simply watching him hurl a baseball.

Exactly how one observes a pitching performance can determine a lot about the sort of conclusions one can reach. I’m in the camp that believes there’s a significant choice to be made between watching a game on TV or at the stadium. If the purpose of the evening is to share an emotional experience with thousands of others, then obviously the ballpark is the only real way to facilitate that. If I’m trying to grasp a game’s flow, observe generals manipulating their troops on the fly, and truly grasp how each player is performing on a given night, however, I need the live broadcast. There is no substitute.

With the latter, there is the understated advantage of sitting down and respecting the craft of your team’s daily slinger: the presentation of the game itself. If I want to marvel at the horizontal ride of Aaron Nola’s changeup, I’m hoping he’s playing at a stadium that gets right behind the ball at release. Or maybe I’m curious how much depth Miles Mikolas gets on his curveball. If he’s in Oakland, well, it just isn’t my night.

So today, we’re going to talk about camera angles. Carson Cistulli put together a fantastic ranking back in 2015, showcasing which stadiums were best to watch a pitcher do his thing. Which broadcasts allowed us to see the movement on pitches, their true locations, and exhibit the game for the best eye test possible.

I’ve made thousands and thousands of pitching GIFs in my day (it’s what happens when you run PitcherList.com) and I’m honored to present my personal ranking of camera angles to update Carson’s former piece. I’ve grouped broadcasts into five tiers, showcasing which camera angles are best to observe a pitcher’s arsenal and illuminate what is truly happening on the field.

There is one major issue when making this list that I need to address. These ranks — well, they aren’t exactly consistent across all pitchers in the majors. Not only does the throwing arm of the pitcher matter, but also where he stands on the rubber greatly affects the presentation of a pitch. Let me give you an example. Here is the Milwaukee Brewers’ broadcast:

This looks incredible, right? Straight on camera, not too elevated, but not so low that fastballs look like breaking balls. Now let’s look at three different pitchers:

I think you can see the problem. With the first two, the Brewers create one of the best experiences out there. You can see the subtle ride on Anibal’s heater with clarity and the fade on Brent Suter‘s changeup enough to nod your head in approval. However, I’m sorry to say that Corey Knebel’s fastball does not have six feet of cutting action. It’s an illusion.

Keep this in mind as we go through these tiers. Some of these angles are the perfect balance for all arms. Some of these angles are better than others for certain pitchers. And some are flat out horrible and need to burn in a fire.

I wanted to create as best of a control group as possible when jumping between each stadium’s angle, which led me to choose four different relievers to showcase each broadcast. Our heroes are as follows:

• Archie Bradley
• Blake Treinen
• Edwin Diaz
• Jeremy Jeffress
• Gerrit Cole (Just for Houston. Don’t ask.)

I elected to mostly feature the same pitch with each, save for a few exceptions, to help give you an idea of how each broadcast displays the same pitch. Edwin Diaz has a slightly different windup and rubber location than the rest, which I wanted to include for the sake of showcasing how some camera angles can be better for different arms.

That’s enough of an introduction, let’s get to it.

Tier 1: The Models of Excellence

Whenever I want to enjoy a pitcher — really enjoy him — I try to find a game at one of these stadiums. They have the right amount of zoom, are slightly positioned off center to the right, preventing the pitcher from blocking part of the view, while also preventing the cataclysmic “horizontal illusion” that I previously described with regard to Knebel’s fastball. If only all stadiums had the capacity to place their cameras in the same locations.

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This contributor is not a supporter of baseball’s Wild Card game format.

While efforts to make a division title more meaningful are sensible and logical and while the addition of another team to the playoff field keeps more teams involved and fan bases invested during the regular season, the issue for me and many others is its one-game format. While a single play-in contest artificially creates drama and is a fun made-for-TV, web-streaming event, the notion that a team can compile a 100 wins over a season-long marathon only to fall in a single game borders on the absurd.

While the postseason is in many ways a different game from the regular season, one defined by small samples, the Wild Card raises legitimate questions about fairness (a point recently addressed by Craig Edwards) and the purpose of October baseball.

Had the Yankees lost in the AL Wild Card game last year, I suspect we would have heard much more said about revamping the system. Well, we might hear about it this next offseason. After being swept by the Red Sox over the weekend, the Yankees are almost assuredly headed to the Wild Card game again despite being projected to win 100 games. The Red Sox are on pace to win 108.

The Red Sox opened play Monday with a 91.4% chance of winning the divisions, with the Yankees at 8.6%. Entering the weekend? Those figures were at 76.6% and 23.4%, respectively. It was a devastating weekend for New York. While the Yankees could still conceivably win the division, it’s unlikely. The Yankees, the No. 3 team in baseball and the American League in run differential and 19 runs better than the No. 4 team (the Indians), are likely destined for a play-in game.

While not all fans of the sport will feel much sympathy for a club situated in baseball’s largest market, with the most flags currently flying forever, winning 100 games only to end up in a winner-take-all game doesn’t exactly seem to be in line with the most meritocratic of practices.

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The 2018 season is looking like another one in which the Giants’ even-year magic has deserted them. Amid a barrage of bad news about Brandon Belt, Johnny Cueto, and Pablo Sandoval — not to mention unsettling signs regarding Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey — they were inactive at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline and now look ill-suited to leapfrog nearly half the league in order to get to October. After a crushing 3-1 loss to the Astros on Monday night via Marwin Gonzalez’s three-run homer off Will Smith with two out in the ninth inning, they’re 57-57, six games out of first place in the NL West and six back in the Wild Card hunt. Their playoff odds (2.8%) suggest they’re fated to play out the string.

Mind you, coming off a 64-98 season, the Giants never appeared to be a juggernaut. Offseason trades for Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen did fill a couple of obvious holes, albeit with players whose best years are probably behind them, but the team’s preseason odds (23.9%) still suggested more than a puncher’s chance at relevance. Yet the Giants haven’t been in first place in the NL West since March 31, and have spent just five days in second since I last checked in on them on June 7, two days after Bumgarner made his belated season debut. Then as now, they were a .500-ish team — 30-30 before Bum’s return, and 27-27 since — but as time has run off the clock, the hits have kept coming. Not the good kind, either.

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Every so often it’s fun to review the preseason FanGraphs staff predictions. We predict standings, but we also predict awards, and, clicking and scrolling down to the National League Rookie of the Year predictions, you can see a lot of love for Ronald Acuna Jr. And, you know, he’s a 20-year-old with a 119 wRC+. Very good! Acuna Jr. ran away with the predictions. There were three votes apiece for Lewis Brinson, Victor Robles, and Scott Kingery. And then there were single votes for J.P. Crawford, Ryan McMahon, Alex Reyes, and Nick Senzel. There were zero votes for Juan Soto. In fairness, there were also zero votes for, say, Brian Anderson and Harrison Bader, but this is a Soto article, so that’s where I’m going to focus.

I wouldn’t consider this a case of staff stupidity. Late last October, Soto turned 19 years old. Injuries limited him in 2017 to just 32 games, all in the very low minors. He came into the season as the FanGraphs No. 50 overall prospect. He was ranked No. 56 by Baseball America. When Soto reached the majors, he did it at nearly record speed. His ascent was as much about major-league injuries as it was about his own performance. Soto wasn’t supposed to arrive as quickly as he has.

There are 240 players who have batted at least 250 times this season. The leader among them in wRC+ is Mike Trout, at 190. In second place, we find Mookie Betts. After Betts, there’s Jose Ramirez. After Ramirez, there’s J.D. Martinez. And after Martinez, there’s Juan Soto. There’s 19-year-old Juan Soto, with a wRC+ of 161. This is a season that hasn’t at all gone the Nationals’ way, but even with that being said, the sudden emergence of Soto has changed the organization’s longer-term outlook. And the shorter-term outlook, too.

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A three-homer game by Steve Pearce, a pair of stifling pitching performances by Rick Porcello — an 86-pitch complete game, the fewest needed for a nine-inning outing since 2014 — and Nathan Eovaldi, and an after-midnight comeback from a 4-1 deficit. With that, the race for the American League East flag is all over but the shouting. At Fenway Park this weekend, a banged-up Red Sox squad swept four straight against a banged-up Yankees squad, widening their division lead to 9.5 games, their largest margin since 2013.

At 79-34 (.699), the Red Sox are on a 113-win pace. Even if they go 24-25 the rest of the way, they would surpass the 1978 team’s win total of 99 — still a Bucky Dent homer short of what they needed — for the franchise’s highest win total in the post-1960 expansion era, and they have a good chance of surpassing the highest winning percentages of their pre-expansion forebears:

A recently as July 1, when they were fresh off losing two out of three in the Bronx, Boston (then 56-29) was in a virtual tie with their pinstriped foes (54-27) for at the AL East lead; the two teams owned the top two records in all of baseball. Since then, the Red Sox have gone 22-6, the Yankees just 15-14. A picture is worth a thousand words:

To be fair, the Red Sox have played the cushier schedule of the two teams since that point, with their three-game series against the Nationals from July 2-4 their only games against a team with a winning record until their July 30-31 pair with the Phillies. In between, they played the Royals, Rangers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Orioles and Twins – six of the seven worst teams in the league, a combined 144 games below .500 through Sunday — with a two-game split in Baltimore the only time they failed to win a series.

While they were luxuriating on that pillow-soft slate, the Yankees faced the Braves, Indians and Rays, and won just the first of those series; they also split six games with the Orioles and two with the Mets. That’s a tough way to catch up under the best of circumstances.

Neither lineup has been whole in this span. The Red Sox have been without Dustin Pedroia for all but three games this season in the aftermath of an experimental cartilage restoration procedure in his left knee, and Eduardo Núñez has been so bad that he (and Brock Holt) topped the second base list in my Replacement-Level Killers series. The catching tandem of Christian Vazquez and Sandy Leon also earned a spot among the Killers even before Vazquez suffered a fractured right pinky that required surgery. Likewise for third baseman Rafael Devers, who first missed time due to left shoulder inflammation and then went back on the DL in late July due to a left hamstring strain. Even Ian Kinsler, who was acquired from the Angels on July 30 in order to shore up the keystone, got in on the injury racket by straining his hamstring in his third game for the Sox. Boston also lost starter Eduardo Rodríguez to an ankle sprain just before the All-Star break, and has been without Chris Sale since July 27 due to shoulder inflammation.

On the other side, the Yankees began this stretch without catcher Gary Sanchez, who has been scuffling for most of the season. After being sidelined from June 25 until July 20 with a groin strain, he played in just two games before reinjuring himself, but not before a dumb, only-in-New-York controversy involving his apparent lack of effort in chasing down a passed ball (the point at which he apparently re-aggravated the groin) and then grounding into a game ending force out. Second baseman Gleyber Torres suffered a right hip strain on July 4, sidelining him for three weeks, and then, most devastatingly, Aaron Judge suffered a chip fracture in his right wrist when he was hit by a Jakob Junis pitch on July 26.

Masahiro Tanaka missed a month due to bilateral hamstring strains from running the bases during an interleague game; he returned on July 10. On top of all this, J.A. Happ, whom the Yankees acquired from the Blue Jays on July 26 with an eye towards his career-long success in Fenway Park, missed this weekend’s series because, like the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, he came down with a case of hand, foot and mouth disease. Chance Adams, who was recalled from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to make his major league debut in his stead, gave the Yankees a five-inning, three-run performance that simply wasn’t enough opposite Eovaldi’s eight shutout innings.

Judge has been the Yankees’ most productive hitter all season, hitting .285/.398/.548 for a 157 wRC+, good for the fifth highest wRC+ in the league. From July 2 until he went down, he was humming along at a similar clip, but remarkably, four Sox hitters have been even hotter in that span:

The Yankees have gotten average-or-better production at every position besides catcher and first base during that span — and it just hasn’t been enough to keep up with the Sox. Pearce, acquired from the Blue Jays for High-A infielder Santiago Espinal on June 28, has clubbed five homers in just 71 PA since the trade, tied with Betts for second on the team behind Martinez’s eight. In other words, he’s even hotter than the players who have ranked second and third in the league in wRC+ overall this year. Those scorching performances have helped to offset the replacement-level ones at second base and catcher, though of course it was Leon’s 10th inning single off Jonathan Holder — just his fourth hit in 34 at-bats since the All-Star break — that turned into the winning run on Sunday night. Everything’s coming up Milhouse.

While there’s been only a slight separation between the two teams on the offensive side, the separation has been massive as far as the rotations go:

Sixty-four percent of the innings thrown by Yankees starters in this span have gone to pitchers hit for ERAs well above 5.00. Most glaringly, Severino has failed to last six innings in any of his last five starts while allowing eight home runs, likely ending his Cy Young hopes. Sabathia has apparently run out of gas, and Gray, an enigma since being acquired from the A’s at the 2017 non-waiver deadline, has pitched his way to the bullpen; his next turn will be taken by July 31 acquisition Lance Lynn.

On the other side, both Sale and Rodriguez were stellar within this stretch before landing on the DL, and Eovaldi picked an outstanding moment in which to put together back-to-back scoreless starts for the first time in his career. As a group, the Sox starters have a home run rate that’s half that of the Yankees (0.9 per nine versus 1.8) while striking out more (9.6 per nine to 8.6) and walking fewer (2.4 per nine to 3.4). Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

I’ll spare you the bullpen table, but where it had tilted towards the Yankees prior to this series (a 3.13 ERA/3.32 FIP ERA versus a 3.87 ERA/3.42 FIP),
it’s now tilted towards the Sox, thanks to the work they did this weekend: 3.79 ERA/3.57 FIP to 4.08 ERA/3.50 FIP. Much of the damage on the pinstriped front owes to Thursday night’s debacle, when manager Aaron Boone pulled Sabathia after three innings and two runs allowed, then sat on his hands as Holder, who entered the night with a 2.06 ERA and 2.52 FIP, allowed seven straight batters to reach base, serving up four extra-base hits including one of Pearce’s homers. Boone then called upon Chad Green, who retired just two of the five hitters he faced. By the time the dust had settled, a 4-2 lead had turned into a 10-4 deficit, and that was before Cessa, who had retired Pearce with runners on the corners to end the frame, allowed five garbage-time runs in his next three innings. As for Sunday, while Aroldis Chapman has looked wobbly lately due to left knee tendinitis, with a 6.10 ERA and eight walks (but 22 strikeouts) in 10.1 innings dating back to June 25, it was only his second blown save of the season.

Both Boston’s Dave Dombrowski and New York’s Brian Cashman were active in the days and weeks leading up to the July 31 deadline, with the former adding Pearce, Kinsler and Eovaldi and the latter Zach Britton, Happ and Lynn. Playoff odds-wise, none of what they did had much effect because the two teams are so far ahead of the pack; per Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, the Yankees’ moves added about one percentage point to their chances of winning the division at the expense of the Red Sox, but those chances are now less than a third of what they were less than a week later because of the Boston trouncing.

It’s not that the Yankees are a bad team — they’re still projected to win 99 games this year. But right now, 99 wins in the AL East gets you a set of steak knives and a date with either the A’s or the Mariners in the Coin Toss Game. This Red Sox team has gotten hot at the right time, and they’ve left the Yankees eating their dust.

What kind of pitcher did the Reds get when they acquired Lucas Sims in the deadline deal that sent Adam Duvall to the Braves? By and large, they got a former first-rounder who has had spotty results in his smattering of big-league outings, yet little left to prove at the minor-league level. Blessed with plus stuff, he remains a tantalizing young talent.

The 24-year-old is getting smarter about his craft. Aware that he should “always be looking for that next step to stay ahead of the curve,” Sims has begun dabbling in analytics. He’s not diving in head first, but his toes are definitely in the water.

“I’ve recently gotten into it, but not to the point where I’m getting overwhelmed with it,” Sims explained earlier this summer. “I’m taking a couple of things here and there, basically whatever resonates with me. I’ve started getting into the spin-rate stuff, and which types of pitches are most effective in certain situations.”

The young right-hander had a colorful answer when asked if his four-seam spin rate is above-average.

“Yeah, but I don’t know exactly what it is,” Sims admitted. “I saw that it was green, and he said green is good.”

The ‘he’ in question was Alex Tamin — “one of our analytics guys” — whose official title with the Braves is director of major league operations. Color-coded assessments weren’t all that Tamin passed along. Sims has also begun “looking into effective spin, and trying to make sure I get true spin.”

Just how much further he dives in with his new team remains a question. Read the rest of this entry »